United Breaks Guitars July 7, 2009
Posted by weare1 in comedy, commentary, economics, frugality, links, music, rant, travel.Tags: airlines, music, united
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Yahoo craps on itself! July 14, 2008
Posted by weare1 in Internet, commentary, rant, software.Tags: crap, my yahoo, myyahoo, yahoo
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This company is incompetent. They literally owned the Internet, they had huge market share, and through complete lack of innovation, they gave it to Google. Today Yahoo! took the one last good thing they had (My Yahoo) and FORCED users to switch to some new 2.0 version, which to put it mildly, sucks ass. Why wouldn’t they give users a choice? Can’t afford the disk space? Really? They had a product I was mostly happy with and ruined it. Nice going dipshits. Do these guys own google stock or what? How is it it possible that one of the biggest companies in the valley hasn’t made any significant changes to their core site in years (other then ruin the few things that worked well? They have hundreds of employees and millions of dollars of market cap, what do these people do all day? I know it’s not customer service, you would know that too if you ever tried to get any out of them. They hide their phone numbers, and don’t even have email support. They make you fill in forms which are auto-handled (incorrectly) and ignored. Yahoo had to go out and buy innovation (Flickr), and even then they didn’t always do a good job. So by switching me to your lame my yahoo 2.0 you are dead to me now Yahoo. I thought it was My Yahoo, apparently not.
A New Way Of Working November 11, 2007
Posted by weare1 in commentary, economics, politics, rant, society.Tags: poitics economy taxes companies corporations campaignfi
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What if there was a law requiring management salaries to be no more then double the average worker’s salary? Ladies and gentlemen we would see across the board increases in wages, a more robust economy, and greater tax revenues. Why won’t we ever see this sort of thing? Because the people in power make ungodly amounts more then the workers they hire, and will do everything in their power to keep it that way. Unless and until workers vote in large numbers and demand significant campaign finance reforms we will never see this here in our country, even though it would be in our national interest. Something to think about.
Boycott Amazon.com
January 3, 2007
Posted by weare1 in commentary, economics, sharks, society.
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UPDATE:Amazon has done the right thing and pulled these products, good for you Amazon. I’ll now go out of way to buy stuff from them. I really like Amazon, and I’ll now re-invest in them after I divested due to this incident.
I refuse to shop at Amazon.com until they remove Shark Fin Soup from their catalog. Nobody should sell this violent cruel unsustainable product. I find this product repulsive and offensive. Any retailer who chooses to look the other way is culpable. Please join me in not buying anything from Amazon.com until they remove this disgusting product.
Amazon.com: Dragonfly Shark Fin Soup: Gourmet Food
http://www.amazon.com/14-1-SHARKFIN-SOUP-CRAB-MEAT/dp/B00019FVV8/
Stealth Inflation October 14, 2006
Posted by weare1 in commentary, economics, frugality, rant.1 comment so far
At the simplest level inflation is where your dollar buys less then it did before. If you follow the Federal numbers on inflation you would think inflation is under control, well I’ve got news for you, they have manipulated their statistics not to show real inflation. Stealth inflation is the slow creep of value being drained from your dollar. Does it cost you the same to live the same way now as it did last month? No, just a little bit more. If you’ll read some of my earlier posts you’ll see some complaints about hidden pricing. I’ve had 2 service providers pull bullshit “regulatory compliance fee” price hikes this month alone. This is stealth inflation. It costs me more this month to use my cell phone and Internet then it did last month, however if you called up those companies and said “how much is your service” they would tell you the same numbers they did last month. They lie. My cable TV costs have risen about 25%, for less service. These companies are going to continue adding hidden pricing just as fast as they think they can get away with, this problem isn’t going to get better, it’s going to get worse, a lot worse. Unless and until consumers band together and refuse to accept hidden pricing it will continue. Clog their customer service lines, cancel your service (price hikes allow you to escape your contract or commitment.) Incidentally two-year contacts are a relatively recent development starting around ‘95. Because we consumers have refused to argue this practice is now quite widespread. Contacts like this are purely in the corporate interest, they don’t help you at all, if you think it protects you against price hikes you’re wrong, they still pull stealth increases like additional “regulatory compliance fee.” What kind of bullshit is that? They obviously want you to believe it’s some sort of official tax, thats why they list it with the real taxes and not in your main bill, their intention is to deceive you. Are you stupid? They think so. If you accept these you may very well be. My generation has seen approximately 35% inflation over our lifetime, meaning my dollar can buy 35% less stuff then my dad’s dollar. Think about that.
At the same time are you making 35% more income then your parents? Not likely as wages have been essentially stagnant for the last 15 years. We are going in the wrong direction. With our law making bodies hopeless addicted to special interests and their corporate bosses, what chance do we have to change the way things are going? Not good. I am very seriously considering cashing in all my investments and investing in Euros to protect my investments against inflation.
I would love to hear some arguments telling me why I’m wrong, or what we should do.
Luke I Am Your Father September 27, 2006
Posted by weare1 in commentary, rant.add a comment
Honestly I could care less about who sired Anna Nichole Smith’s child.
Call For Action – Hold Large ISPs Accountable September 20, 2006
Posted by weare1 in Internet, commentary, rant.add a comment
I write computer security software. One of my programs detects unauthorized brute-force password attempts via ssh and then firewalls offending IPs, and notifies their upstream provider. Increasingly these attempts are launched from infected computers Windows boxes and not malicious individuals. If I had an infected computer and my upstream provider was notified of this fact, I’d sure want to know about it. The reactions from different upstream providers “abuse” addresses (if they even have one) has been very interesting to say the least.
By far European upstream providers have been the best responders. Asian providers have been the worst. A few select US providers have been good about responding (Speakeasy has been the best). For the most part though most of my notifications go without any response. I wonder how many actually notify their respective users.
This week however I saw a new low. abuse@verizon.net has deferred even accepting my notification to them. It’s been 3 days now that my notification to abuse@verizon.net has dwelt in my mailq. Shame on you Verizon, this is likely a high-speed Internet customer with an infected computer who doesn’t know it. His computer is likely causing widespread abuse of the Internet, even clogging up your bandwidth with his virus’es malicious payloads. I find this unacceptable, negligent, incompetent, and bad for the Internet. Ignoring abuse@verizon.net notification of TOS violations is not what even you claim ‘net neutrality’ is.
To any lawyers reading this, there is a large ‘class’ of ISVs who have a large amount of resources that are being abused by ISPs who cannot manage their obligations in the public interest. To any dead-tree reporters reading this, I could explain the terms and concepts involved in a more layman like terminology if needed.
This type of attack was attempted 172 times this year on this server. I can see profiles of certain groups of co-ordinated or programmatic attack attempts by the usernames they attempt to access. This type of attack attempt is becoming more frequent.
To Verizon.net please get your house in order.
—
Sep 17 04:59:00 postfix/smtp[23021]: 3B07EC258DF: to=<abuse@verizon.net>, relay=relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11], delay=42, status=deferred (host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 450 Requested mail action not taken-Try later:sv22pub.verizon.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
…
Sep 20 17:03:19 postfix/smtp[392]: 3B07EC258DF: to=<abuse@verizon.net>, relay=relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11], delay=302702, status=deferred (host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 450 Requested mail action not taken-Try later:sv4pub.verizon.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
UPDATE: message hard bounced 2 days later and was never accepted for delivery.
Consider Your Purchases August 16, 2006
Posted by weare1 in commentary, frugality.add a comment
I recommend you revise your traditional buying patterns and consider a new way of looking at your purchases. I have made it a practice of formally making a list of all “big-ticket” (>$50) items I’m considering buying. I use the web site thethingsIwant.com to facilitate my lists online. The benefits I’ve seen from doing this have been many.
1) listing items forces you to think about them
- do I like item A more then item B
- which items are the best value
- which items are the most important to me
- do I really need this item
- will I still want this item in the future
2) listing items injects a pause in the process, this pause has given me the opportunity to:
- obtain items for lower prices because of pause
- see newer items that perform same functions better and/or cheaper
- reconsider items value and my “need” value
- prioritize
- helps stop impulse purchases you’ll regret later
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had things listed I was going to buy that upon reconsideration decided I really didn’t need. Everything gets cheaper over time, waiting to buy things is a good thing. Just a small shift in the way you make buying decisions can help you save a lot of money, and often get you better products, especially in the consumer electronics space. When confronted with my prioritized list, I’m surprised by how many items I thought I needed now, but really needed later.
If you’re a really savvy list-maker you’ll link your items to Froogle or Pricegrabber type links (rather then Amazon type), and watch your items’ prices change over time. You can even list non-product type expenses, like that trip to Hawaii. You can use them to compare two (or more) variations, should I take that trip to Hawaii, or Thailand, or should I get that fancy new digital camera instead?
I love using my list-maker’s bookmarklet, which lets me “tag” any thing I come across surfing that I would like to consider purchasing. Quick, simple, free, and easy. Do it now.
Poor Management August 12, 2006
Posted by weare1 in commentary, rant.add a comment
I see it everyday, unmotivated, unhappy employees, poor customer service, and arrogant management that think they’re doing a good job. Go ahead fuckwads, try and hide behind your precious IVRs, (aka voicemail hell) we see you. I see simple things in everyday business operations that could be done better, cheaper, and faster.
I see Southwest Airlines is about to reverse their stupid best line-cutters/elbowers get best/only seats. “Heads up grandma.” Still their arrogant overbooking policy and lack of accommodation will prevent me from ever flying that airline again.
Customer badwill, it’s a lot more expensive then any other expense I can think of in business, and it has a very long memory. We all harbor badwill towards our cable companies and vow to dump them at first opportunity, right? Why is that? Does it have to be that way? Is that the most profitable way? The simplest?
Bad management is also self-perpetuating. Bad managers (who think they’re good managers) hire more bad managers, thus ensuring a consistant supply of short term thinking at the expense of long term optimization.
Turnaround is fair play. I used to be a huge Apple fan (Apple II, Newton, Mac I, II, Powerbook, AAPL stock), but they got arrogant and started charging ridiculous amounts for everything, simply because they could, they were the originators of the upgrade your OS or else, school of customer support, not Microsoft like popular opinion would have you believe. Granted Microsoft did make this a new art form. Eventually I got to the point where I said, “I’m not going to buy another Apple product again, ever.” And I didn’t, well for about 10 years anyway. That damned Mac Mini was just too sexy not to buy. You know what, not only did I like it, I liked the way Apple treated me this time around, so I got one of those Ipod things the kids all have, and I liked that too. So Apple made it off the badwill list but it cost them bigtime.
Comcast, you’re still on the list yet I pay you every month (basic cable only). Because I live in an apartment and I gotta have my Daily Show from Comedy Central. But rest assured that if or when AT&T comes out with a competitor I’m outtie bitch. Even at almost twice the price they will have a chance to harvest their own badwill if old SBC cum pacbell management is still in place. The ironic thing is they could get more money per month out of me if they simply did away with restrictive pricing. I would happy pay $20 a month more just to get HBO but I would have to subscribe to some fascist “tiered” package for $40 a month more. That pricing structure isn’t technical as they would have you believe either. It’s preditory pricing, I don’t like it, and I won’t pay for it, and it’ll end up costing you more in the long run. Stupid greedy ass mutherfuckers.
End rant.
You Do Not Have Health Insurance « The Baseline Scenario August 6, 2009
Posted by weare1 in commentary, economics, politics, rant, society.add a comment
You Do Not Have Health Insurance « The Baseline Scenario